Farewell Professional Year Interns

Photo: Chen Li, Sandra Vallance - Acting Chief Executive Officer, Connecting Up and Renu Bala after presenting the results of their final project
 
Today we farewell our two new Professional Year interns Chen Li and Renu Bala, both UniSA Masters of IT graduates, who have worked together with our long-term volunteer Stathis Avramis over the last three months on creating a more sustainable volunteer model by implementing the volunteer management software investigated last year to structure volunteer admission and management processes, training and development. 
 
The software presents a scaffolding to present the forms, training materials and videos created by staff and volunteers to more easily assist new volunteers in their office environment induction and to quickly learn skills required for the work involved, from understanding community information, developing internet and computer literacy to telephone techniques.  
 
Connecting Up volunteers are traditionally tertiary educated people who bring their broad range of ideas and skills to the organisation before quickly transitioning into the workforce. The aim is to capitalize on these benefits whilst reducing the initial time commitment required for the induction towards making a more cost-neutral and sustainable program.
 
Chen and Renu also found time to work on minor projects throughout their internship including assisting with the creation of a film, capturing the work of Connecting Up in Australia which was set at Cleland Wildlife Park for TechSoup.
 
"Connecting Up, a real place to demonstrate your skills and knowledge at a professional level, if you are looking to apply them and become proficient." Chen

"I have thoroughly enjoyed being here. I couldn’t think of any other place to do an internship. You have made this internship really valuable and interesting." Renu

We have thoroughly enjoyed working with them both and wish them all the very best for their future career.